October 22, 2018
VERVE {IN} VERSE: IN CONVERSATION WITH MONICA LEWIS
Note: Verve {in} Verse is my new poet-focused feature here at The Kenyon Review in which I converse with poets about their work and interests both on and off […]
October 8, 2018
On The English Patient
Last week, a piece called “The Movie Assassin” made the rounds on social media, part personal essay on the struggles of being a movie reviewer, part analysis of our society’s […]
October 2, 2018
Poetry for People Who Hate Poetry – October
This is a love story. This is the story that led me here, writing to you about how and why I fell in love with poetry, and what I think […]
October 1, 2018
On Writing What You Know
I have in my hands the final volume of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle—it has the now-familiar square shape of an Archipelago Books publication and a yellow cover with an […]
September 30, 2018
Verve {in} Verse: In Conversation with Edward Vidaurre
Note: Verve {in} Verse is my new poet-focused feature here at The Kenyon Review in which I converse with poets about their work and interests both on and […]
September 29, 2018
New Origins
Poetry may often come to us in small packages and brief passages, but poetry is rooted in our big human questions: who are we? how (and why) did we get […]
September 26, 2018
When the First Draft Isn’t the First
In the days before heading off to a writing retreat with some friends, I rushed to complete the first draft a new short story. Once I’d written to the end […]
September 25, 2018
Poetry for People Who Hate Poetry – September
“I, too, dislike it.” Marianne Moore, “Poetry” But you don’t hate it. At least that’s what I hope you’ll discover as you read this column. I don’t want to convince […]
September 24, 2018
Little Monsters: On Time & The Consciousness of Poems
Hope is a pearl that I share I share it with you It’s a pearl that I share I share it with you, all the time I share it with […]
September 20, 2018
How to Write an Ideological Novel
It is a truth if not universally then at least widely acknowledged that all fiction is inherently political. In fact, today, many writers would argue that all fiction should be […]
September 17, 2018
On Accessibility in Historical Fiction
I’ve generally enjoyed Graywolf Press’s “Art of” series, a group of books focusing on different topics pertaining to writing (The Art of Subtext, The Art of Perspective, The Art of […]
September 11, 2018
Luck, Lit, & Gutter Spouts
I was twenty-three years old when I won the Hopwood Award for Poetry. A recent college grad, I lived in a leaky apartment that I’d furnished with lawn furniture and […]